People may repeatedly encounter the same misinformation when it “goes viral.” The results of four main experiments (two preregistered) and a pilot experiment (total N = 2,587) suggest that repeatedly encountering misinformation makes it seem less unethical to spread—regardless of whether one believes it. Seeing a fake-news headline one or four times reduced how unethical participants thought it was to publish and share that headline when they saw it again—even when it was clearly labeled as false and participants disbelieved it, and even after we statistically accounted for judgments of how likeable and popular it was. In turn, perceiving the headline as less unethical predicted stronger inclinations to express approval of it online. People were also more likely to actually share repeated headlines than to share new headlines in an experimental setting. We speculate that repeating blatant misinformation may reduce the moral condemnation it receives by making it feel intuitively true, and we discuss other potential mechanisms that might explain this effect.

中文翻译：

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错误信息和道德：遇到假新闻头条使他们在发布和分享时显得不那么不道德

当“病毒式传播”时，人们可能会反复遇到相同的错误信息。四个主要实验（两个预先注册）和一个试点实验（总 N = 2,587）的结果表明，反复遇到错误信息可以使传播看起来不那么不道德——无论人们是否相信它。看到假新闻标题一到四次会减少参与者再次看到该标题时认为发布和分享该标题的不道德程度 - 即使它被明确标记为虚假并且参与者不相信它，甚至在我们统计判断之后它是多么受欢迎和受欢迎。反过来，认为标题不那么不道德，预示着更倾向于在网上表达对它的认可。在实验环境中，与分享新标题相比，人们也更有可能真正分享重复的标题。我们推测，重复公然的错误信息可能会通过使其在直觉上感觉真实而减少其受到的道德谴责，并且我们讨论了可能解释这种影响的其他潜在机制。